Michigan Courts: Chimpanzees Not “Persons,” but One Justice Dissents

Over the past decade or so, the Nonhuman Rights Project has sought to obtain legal personhood for chimpanzees and elephants. The method to their madness is to seek writs of habeas corpus to release the animals from various means of confinement.

The group has failed so far. But it keeps gaining ground that should never have been lost. One high court judge in New York would have granted personhood and rights to chimps, and later, two judges in that court would have done so for elephants. Meanwhile, this fall the Hawaiian Supreme Court will review yet another elephant writ of habeas corpus case brought by the organization. Frankly, I fear the worst.

Michigan has seen similar habeas litigation involving chimps where the NhRP lost in the trial and appeals courts. The case involved seven chimps kept at a roadside zoo in apparently inappropriate circumstances from an animal-welfare perspective. As animal rights activists always do, the NhRP analogized the denial of rights to chimps to the oppression once imposed upon women and to slavery. The Court of Appeals judges weren't buying. From the unanimously decided, Nonhuman Rights Project v. DeYoung Family Zoo (citations omitted):